On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, sixteen-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing.

While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police corruption abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved, and the girls were never found.

In 2015, crime writer Jax Miller--who had been haunted by the case--decided to travel to Oklahoma to find out what really happened on that winter night in 1999, and why the story was still simmering more than fifteen years later. What she found was more than she could have ever bargained for: evidence of jaw-dropping levels of police negligence, entire communities ravaged by methamphetamine addiction, and a series of interconnected murders with an ominously familiar pattern.

My guest today is Jax Miller who is here to share her story…HELL IN THE HEARTLAND with us.

On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, WY, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard's death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal and it's their voices we hear in this stunningly effective theater piece.

 Moises Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project of NYC made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half in the aftermath of the murder andconducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town.  From these interviews as well as their ownexperiences Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater members have constructed A deeply moving theatrical experience.

 The Laramie Project chronicles the life of the town of Laramie in the year after the murder, using 8 actors to embody more than 60 different people in their own words--- from rural ranchers to university professors.  The result is a complex portrayal that dispels the simplistic media stereotypes and explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

My guest today is Stephen Belber, one of the Tectonic Theater Project members responsible for THE LARAMIE PROJECT.

When Black women and girls are targeted and murdered their cases are often categorized by police officers as “N.H.I.” — “No Human Involved.”

 Dehumanized and invisible to the public eye, they are rarely seen as victims. In the United States, Black women are killed at a higher rate than any other group of women, but their victimhood is not covered by the media and their cases do not receive an adequate level of urgency. That is until now.

My guest today is sociologist, Cheryl L. Neely, whose newly published book, “No Humans Involved,” presents a disturbing picture of the treatment of minority women, often on the fringes of society, by law enforcement in America.

It is my honor to welcome Professor and author Cheryl Neely to this episode of MURDER MOST FOUL.

On Christmas night in 1996, the brutal murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey shocked the nation. Found dead in her family's Boulder, Colorado home, JonBenét's body was discovered in the basement, with a broken skull, strangled by a garrote and sexually assaulted. A ransom note left in the home added to the confusion, but the truth would prove even more elusive.

As the case unfolded, the media swarmed and speculation ran rampant. JonBenét’s status as a child beauty queen only fueled the fire, with many focusing on her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, as the primary suspects.

However, the case took an unexpected turn when Boulder District Attorney's office brought in legendary homicide detective Lou Smit. Already known for bringing to justice the killers of actor Kelsey Grammer’s sister, Karen, Lou was a good choice.

Unfortunately, Smit, known for his unyielding pursuit of the truth, quickly grew disillusioned with the Boulder police’s focus on the Ramsey family. He believed that vital evidence pointing away from the parents was being ignored.

Resigning from his official role, Smit chose to continue his investigation privately, using his own resources, determined to find justice for JonBenét.

In his book, Lou and JonBenet, Smit’s longtime friend and colleague, John Anderson, reveals the story behind Smit’s tireless investigation and the profound legacy he left behind.

Drawing on Smit’s extensive work, Anderson and the detective’s family and colleagues believe the elusive killer can finally be identified, bringing justice to a case that has haunted the nation for nearly three decades.

Imagine, spending 18 years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit!

October 1997. Late one night in Fairbanks, Alaska, a passerby finds a teenager unconscious, collapsed on the edge of the road, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Two days later, he dies in the hospital. His name is John Gilbert Hartman and he's just turned 15 years old. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under the age of 21 and of Alaska Native and American Indian descent. Police lineup witnesses, trials follow, and all four men receive lengthy prison terms. Case closed. 

But journalist Brian Patrick O'Donoghue can't put the story out of his mind. When the opportunity arises to teach a class on investigative reporting, he finally digs into what happened to the "Fairbanks Four."

A relentless search for the truth ensues as O'Donoghue and his students uncover the lies, deceit, and prejudice that put four innocent young men in jail.

When last we saw our heroine, Karen Read, she was free after her trial last year in Dedham, MA for the murder of her then boyfriend, Police Officer John O’Keefe. The trial ended in a hung jury. But like all soap operas, we ain’t done yet! Her retrial has just begun and it promises to be as bizarre as her first…or even more so. Once again, we turn to Kevin Lenihan of YELLOW COTTAGE TAILS and a frequent commentator on COURT TV for his expert analysis.

The 1987 murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan sent shockwaves through the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Georgia like few other crimes before it. The neighborhood, with its stately mansions and top-tier schools, was simply not the kind of place where women were gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight. How many socialites had enemies so dangerous they would be murdered by a hitman pretending to deliver roses on an early winter morning.
In A Devil Went Down to Georgia, award-winning writer Deb Miller Landau details the shocking events that followed Lita’s murder in 1987, including the surprising lack of evidence, racial bias in the justice system, and the international manhunt for Lita’s killer.

Full of twists and turns, legal battles, and the McClinton family’s unrelenting dedication to justice, Landau's rigorous investigation is the first complete account of this tragic American crime.

The incredible story of a 1958 murder that ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California—a murder so twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy.

Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north, on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment.

The mystery deepens when it is discovered that Olga’s mother in-law—a deeply manipulative and deceptive woman—had been doing everything in her power to separate Olga and her son, Frank, prior to Olga’s disappearance.
From a forged annulment to multiple attempts to hire people to “get rid” of Olga, to a faked extortion case, Elizabeth seemed psychopathically attached to her son. Yet she denied having anything to do with Olga’s disappearance with a smile.

The book is A LOVELY GIRL and my guest is its author, Deborah Larkin

In 1910 in the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and the daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time by author Alex Tresniowski in his thrilling, True Crime book, “The Rope.”

 Mr. Tresniowski joins me now.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker?

Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, entitled Fall River. 

The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.
In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before.

And it is my pleasure to welcome Kate Winkler Dawson to Murder Most Foul.